COVID-19 Pandemic May Have Accelerated Brain Aging, New Study Finds

Did the COVID-19 pandemic cause your brain to age faster? A recent study is sounding the alarm that the impacts of the pandemic may have accelerated cognitive aging. What is most worrisome is that these impacts were observed regardless of whether you actually got COVID-19, meaning that it was the impact of the pandemic rather than the disease itself that was responsible for the changes in the brain. Read on for the details.

Accelerated Brain Aging Attributed to COVID-19 Pandemic, Rather Than the Virus

A study published in Nature Communications is once again pointing to the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the most significant health crisis to hit the world in this lifetime. The researchers found that the months surrounding the pandemic were connected to what was observed to be accelerated brain aging.

The scientists looked at the brains of nearly 1,000 people, dividing them into two groups. The control group had undergone two MRI scans that were conducted prior to the onset of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020. A second group, nicknamed the "pandemic group," underwent one MRI before the start of the pandemic and one after the onset of the global health crisis.

The results from both sets of MRIs were compared against an existing set of data that had documented the brain imaging of over 15,000 healthy people. The goal of the comparison was to demonstrate the gap between predicted brain age and chronological age. For context, the chronological age was the subject's real age, while the predicted brain age was defined by the actual physical state of the brain.

Researchers found that there was a significant gap between predicted and chronological brain age after the pandemic. The average gap increase came in at 5.5 months, enough of a difference to be deemed statistically relevant by the researchers. What was most surprising is that this gap was present regardless of whether the subject had been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Diving Deeper Into the Results

The results also demonstrated that men, senior citizens, and people at a socioeconomic disadvantage showed the biggest gaps between predicted and chronological brain age. The study's authors emphasized that brain aging is not necessarily connected to a decrease in cognitive ability. However, actually coming down with COVID-19 did translate to a decrease in cognitive function, a link that has been known for quite some time.

Participants in the study were 63 years old on average. None of the subjects had notable chronic health conditions, as the researchers wanted "to maintain consistency in health status across all subjects." The authors noted that "Our study highlights the pandemic’s significant impact on brain health, beyond direct infection effects, emphasizing the need to consider broader social and health inequalities."

The impacts of the so-called "long COVID" have been well documented over the last several years. These impacts typically focus on the long-term respiratory and systemic manifestations of the virus. For instance, sufferers of long COVID report higher rates of persistent respiratory issues, cognitive impairment, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These symptoms have been documented in patients with known COVID-19 infections.

This study suggests that the impacts of the pandemic on the brain go far beyond the lingering physical symptoms associated with the actual virus. What remains to be seen is what caused this accelerated aging. Experts hypothesize that social and health deprivation were leading factors behind these changes in the brain.

The good news is that the changes may not be permanent. “We can’t yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse,” said Dorothee Auer, a professor of neuroimaging at the University of Nottingham and the study’s senior author, “but it’s certainly possible, and that’s an encouraging thought.”

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